Sunday, September 2, 2007

ESPN's Late Night Busch Series Near Miss

As soon as the deal was done with ESPN for the Busch Series races, veteran TV executives were wondering where ESPN2 was going to put those live college football games that fans have been watching on that network for years. The answer was, all around NASCAR.

The kick-off of the college football season meant a new world for the Busch Series. In this first football Saturday, the live game preceding the race from Fontana ran about twenty minutes long. It pushed the scheduled NASCAR Countdown show off the air, although ESPN did air a live version on its Internet service, ESPN360.

If the football game had followed the same time pattern as many earlier that day, it could have run more than thirty minutes into the race itself. While Fontana and Richmond next week are night races, the Busch Series will shortly switch back to afternoon starts, which will be preceded by a live football game running directly into the race.

Several months ago, The Daly Planet wondered if this NASCAR eight year TV contract would be the catalyst for changing the ESPN Classic Network over to ESPN3. Earlier this season, ESPN Classic was pressed into use when yet another live event over-run forced NASCAR off its designated channel. The NASCAR program switched ESPN networks three times.

When the Fontana race actually hit the air, once again the ESPN technical gremlins appeared, and viewers heard nothing. The silence was eventually broken and the voice of Dr. Jerry Punch was heard in mid-sentence. With all due respect, ESPN2 has been telecasting NASCAR Busch races for seven months now. These problems did not begin to pop-up until network resources were re-allocated to college football.

Punch led almost directly into the race, and with Rusty Wallace and Andy Petree having a nice big track and some fast racing, they turned in a solid performance. Rusty was not on his game in the big Keselowski crash, but it many have been his first time trying to choose words on TV when a NASCAR driver was possibly injured.

Perhaps, next time he will step back and let Doctor Punch be put on-the-spot in a difficult situation. Phrases such as "walk away" and words like "Earnhardt Sr." need to be used only after serious thought and in complete sentences. Even a driver who appears to exit his car could have serious injuries when evaluated later.

The race itself worked well for the network, with good TV pictures, sound, and graphics. The hated Draft-Tracker revealed its head in this race, and once again made absolutely no sense to anyone in North America other than the ESPN TV executives.

This event was a great example of why TV networks should show the entire field scrambling for the finish line on the final lap. ESPN tried to show the finish with a big wideshot, but it mostly covered the area after the line. Viewers could see cars door-to-door, but had no idea who they were or what was going on in the final turn. Once again, when the winner of the race crosses the finish line...the race is not over. TNT never got this concept, so perhaps ESPN will before the end of the season.

Nice finish by Jeff Burton, great of the network and NASCAR to direct him into Victory Lane so he could be interviewed before ESPN2 left the air. Good performance by the pit reporters, but the animosity building between the drivers and ESPN needs to be nipped in-the-bud, and it needs more than a newspaper quote from the race producer. This is an issue right now, and trust me...its not going away.

Normally, ESPN provides the announcers of a live event guidelines and a script to read if their event runs long. On ESPN2, the college football announcers did not acknowledge that NASCAR Countdown was supposed to be on, never directed viewers to ESPN360, and never re-set the scene at the top of the hour when the race was to have aired live. This is a big fundamental mistake from a network who routinely does this for live events. Several weeks ago, even the racing-hating Cliff Drysdale played traffic cop in a tennis event and directed viewers where to tune for racing.

NASCAR fans are going to be in for a very interesting ride with the Busch Series for the rest of the season. As ESPN360 is not available on many Internet Service Providers, including Comcast, this option is ridiculous for NASCAR races. The only other option available for Internet users is the Turner-owned NASCAR.com, who carried the Busch broadcast on ESPN in its entirety. Think about that one.

ESPN scheduled a Busch race after live college football. When the game ran long, the best place to "see" the race was on NASCAR.com's Internet site. Does ESPN not understand that NASCAR fans do not need a lot more prodding until they abandon the old way of watching TV, and just rely on the Internet for the entire broadcast?

By the way, next week a live college football game precedes the NEXTEL Cup night race from Richmond on ABC Sports. I would suggest that fans plan well ahead for their viewing options, because all of the ESPN Networks will be busy with live football as well. Once again, NASCAR will be all dressed-up with no place to go.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Simply click on the COMMENTS button below, or email editor@thedalyplanet.tv if you wish not to be published. Thanks again for taking the time to stop-by and leave your opinion.

28 comments:

Again, I wasn't home to watch the race live so if the game had run longer I would have lost out on the live feed of the first part of the race on ESPN360. Please ESPN, if a football game runs long just tape the race and air it in its entirety after the game! No joined-in-progress!

Rusty does need to avoid mentioning the name "Dale Earnhardt" when someone hits the wall, and the segway into saying "and that is Dale Jr.'s car" was very inappropriate in my eyes. Thankfully after they broke out of the commercial to show the tail-end of the wreck we instantly heard Keselowski say he was okay on the radio, so that makes it even more inappropriate to mention Earnhardt Sr. All that needs to be said is "he hit the wall head-on, and that's the scariest type of impact you can have, so hopefully he's okay". By mentioning the name of Earnhardt Sr., the obvious implication is that "someone has died in the past in a head-on impact like this, so let's hope the same didn't just happen here, especially since the owner of that car lost his father in that kind of impact". I don't blame Rusty for naturally thinking about that, I'm sure a lot of fans thought about the same thing when they saw the wreck, but please don't bring it up on the air.

As I said, I wasn't home to watch it live but based on my DVR timestamps it looks like the race end at about 1:15 AM. What was the rush to get Burton to victory lane before ESPN2 went off the air? The drag racing was taped and I assume that there wasn't any live or new programming airing after the drag race. If it was early Saturday afternoon I would have understood, but at 1:15 AM I don't see the need to do a rushed victory interview and quickly leave the air.

How long has Rusty been associated with Nascar? Not long enough, apparently. When will he start to get the driver's names right? It's Denny Hamlin, bozo. And, when five guys are holding up Brad K, and waiting for the ambulance, it's not walking away, Rusty. This man was hurt, and carried off on a stretcher, so it's not walking away. They need Rusty out of the booth and they need to find someone who can intelligently call the race.

Sophia: NASCAR.com has had a free broadcast of all of the Busch races from ESPN2 this year, it should be on the front page when the pre-race starts. I think all you have to do is click on it and it'll open the window (though you might have to log in on a (free) account). I've used it a couple times, and I haven't had to pay them a dime.

Other than Rusty and DraftTrack, the coverage yesterday was very good. It was informative, many drivers were covered, and even pit strategy was discussed. And, the announcers actually seemed interested in the race! Of course, Rusty is still like nails on a chlakboard and continues his speaking before thinking or seeing. Someone has to explain to him that he doesn't have to say the first thing that pops into his head or talk everytime no one else is. Some silence is best.

And PLEASE ESPN, your announcers can't even figure out what DraftTrack is, so just cut it out of your coverage and let it sit in the technical TV failures bin with such "inovations" as FOX-3D.

With the ESPN family of networks trying to throw a blanket over college football, it was a quick end to a blowout game that allowed race coverage to start on time. If the game had been tight, NASCAR fans might have spent many laps scrolling through their on-screen guides and trolling the Web to find race coverage without much luck. ESPN 360 is not available on Time Warner cable and other major providers so the network effectively took the pre-race show, threw it in a hole and covered it with dirt.

Rusty Wallace is a bright guy and one of the most talented drivers the sport has ever seen, but he is not a broadcaster. Talent in one area does not translate into ability in another. His comments on the Keselowski crash were just wrong, especially the reference to the number 3's fatal crash. Certainly everyone who saw the 88 hit the wall were hoping that he would emerge from the car without injury. Rusty immediately went to the dark side by comparing the wreck to lap 499 at Daytona in 2001. That is simply tasteless. If the comments were made to accentuate the drama of the crash, it was not needed. That crash was dramatic enough on its own.

Perhaps the problem with Rusty's commentary stems from too much internal filtering. In the real world, he uses a lot of "blue" words which of course cannot happen on television. One suspects that he expends substantial mental effort searching for acceptable words like "heck" and "gosh". As such he fails to convey the facts and the feel of the racing action to the viewers.

Technical gremlins continued this week within the audio section of the broadcast truck. Several times the announcers' voices were afflicted with distortion. While it was no more than a distraction, one wonders if ESPN has shifted the more capable crew and equipment from the race track to the gridiron.

With no trips to the Tech Center in the first part of the race, the viewer might have wondered if the Stygian southern California heat had melted Tim away. Two short mid-race visits assured everyone that he was alive, but all was not well. The network still struggles to fit this into the broadcast and Tim comes across as uncomfortable and stilted on the air. Too bad because Brewer is both smart and eloquent in other settings.

The network's luck held through the broadcast with an interesting, for California, race and no crippling technical glitches. But the experience was about as satisfying as drinking a glass of water on a hot day and finding out that it was warm.

If I am an ignoramus and overlooking something, please provide a direct link, please.

That site is so damn crowded with stuff, I can't tell what the hell to link on but just tried two different pages and both LISTEN NOW FREE TRIAL came up for Cup and the Busch series. Something called TRACKPASS.

THEN I clicked on PRN...same deal?*&^%$##@&!*!

Sorry if it's ONLY ME but I have NEVER heard of NASCAR giving out free anything except "trials"

Pee SPN. I am glad we most ALL AGREE Rusty is not making it as a broadcaster. His dramatic statements last night even put him in a worse light.

I thought I could not stand Bill Weber and his dramatic "Death March" as a race wound down for somebody to win. He would drag up every boo boo, scrapped knee, lost puppy, dead relative (Or if HMS the horrible plane wreck) as a driver headed for the finish line.

Sophia: It's free Busch video, not audio. You have to pay for the audio (the radio version), but can get the ESPN video and audio for free. Which really doesn't make sense, but check it during next week's Busch race. Indeed, you can check it tonight, because they're doing it for the 6 Cup races on ESPN as well. Try it tonight, and if you can't get it I'll PM you further instructions over on the SPEED forums once I've checked it again myself, since I haven't used it much. But I guarantee it works

Yes, the games went long and 2nd live games were joined in progress. This happens all the time on fall Saturdays with back to back games. Why would the Busch series be handled any different than college football? I'm a racing fan, but see no way that the Busch series would get better treatment than Football.

The Busch Races are going to be free on NASCAR.com for the rest of the season. This is the full audio and video feed, and it will not ask you to set up an account. That is the word from Turner Interactive.

I would like to repeat my suggestion that Tim Brewer join Allen Bestwick and Brad Daugherty in the Infield Studio for the Busch races. They are too short for Tech Center facts, and really don't need the detail of Cup's four hour marathons. Having him in the Infield Studio at Fontana would have really helped. Brad is nice, but has no hands-on perspective.

Draft-Tracker was fine once a race, or even once an hour, but it simply has outlived its usefullness. When it is forced into a race, it is even worse. We need either live action or a replay of why we are under yellow, not more color flow graphics.

ESPN schedules two types of live events, those controlled by a clock and those that are not. College football is controlled by a clock, and is scheduled in a three and one half hour slot with a normal over-run of thirty minutes. Four hours is the time that should be clear before any football game begins.

Even before NASCAR was added to ESPN, we who have been in the business for a while were asking...where are they going to put it? That is why I wrote the article on ESPN3. If that football game had run thirty minutes into the Busch race, or if next week's game runs thirty minutes into the Richmond NEXTEL Cup race, there will be a whole lot of yelling going on.

While college football is in its first couple of weeks, the Busch Series has been racing for seven months. That deserves more respect and better scheduling.

As far as scheduling overlaps go, there is a huge difference between college football overruns causing delays in getting to the starts of other college football games and college football overruns causing delays in getting to the start of a NASCAR race. When there are two completely different sports involved you're going to make one fan base extremely angry. In our case, the dedicated NASCAR fans that only turn on their TV's on a Saturday or Sunday to watch a race are going to be exremely upset when they're staring at a completely different sport and have to miss the start of their race.

Most overlaps on sports TV involve the same sport (NBA doubleheaders, NFL doubleheaders, NHL doubleheaders, college football double and tripleheaders, etc.) so in general most fans of that sport can live with watching the end of game 1 in return for missing the start of game 2, because they were going to watch both games anyway. Yes there are a small number of fans that might only be tuning in for game 2 because it involves their favorite team, but in a lot of sports the home markets will switch out of the end of game 1 to air the entire game 2 (the NFL most notably) or move the start of game 2 to another local channel in the home market (i.e. ESPN during the baseball playoffs in recent years).

You don't see a lot of cases in sports where an NBA game is immediately followed by an NFL game, for example. If ESPN made ridiculous scheduling decisions like leaving a 90 minute block for an NBA game right before the start of an NFL game I'm sure a lot of football fans would be furious. NASCAR fans are no different. When you leave a 3-hour block of programming for a 4-hour college football game immediately prior to a NASCAR race you're going to upset NASCAR nation because we know that's going to create an overlap, which means we lose.

Well, I just finally got thru watching the Busch race. I set my DVR to record everything from 8pm to 2am on both ESPN2 and ESPNC. I was quite surprised to find out that nothing was ever bumped over to ESPNC. Apparently, the basketball game *BETWEEN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL* was too important to interrupt!

There was a small notice that appeared above the crawl on ESPN2 at about 9:44 that said to look for “Countdown” on ESPN360. After that, everything regarding the NASCAR coverage was on the crawl.

I was dismayed to see this particular wording come across on the crawl: "The race can be seen in its entirety on ESPN360". This is an ominous portent of things to come. Even though they made it on ESPN2 for the green flag this time, they're obviously ready and willing to bump NASCAR off their real TV channels entirely when push comes to shove. It's one thing to send the pre-race show to Internet oblivion, but actual race laps should never receive such treatment. Unfortunately, ESPN seems poised to do just that!

I agree with stricklinfan – when something like this happens, they should just tape-delay the race and let us enjoy it in its entirety. I also can’t figure out why they were in such a rush to end the broadcast after the winner crossed the finish line. All that was coming on afterwards was a recorded drag-racing event, followed by recorded basketball. No offense to the drag racing fans, but would it have been a big deal if they had stayed with the Busch coverage for another 5 or 10 minutes? It would have been nice to hear from Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, and Denny Hamlin. Instead, ESPN left the air less than 4 minutes after the race ended. Ridiculous!!!

I don't think any of the broadcasters mentioned Reut's name or car all race last night. We did see a nano second of Ambrose and someone else but that's it for a regular Busch guy. It was poor coverage of the WHOLE race. I thought it was in poor taste about Rusty bringing up Dale Sr. that wreck last night wasn't anything like Sr's wreck.

Since I've been criticizing ESPN's coverage of pitstops and pit strategy over the past few weeks, I should probably summarize my observations of their pit coverage in the California Busch race:

Overall, it seems like they're trying to get things right. They did a better job of discussing pit strategy, anticipating pitstops and covering pitstops last night, but things are still far from perfect:

The first caution came out on lap 3. ESPN didn't show or mention any pitstops. Then, later on around lap 20, Rusty says "You saw some people come down pit road on lap 3 and already making some adjustments". Well, actually Rusty, we never did see any pitstops! I went back and looked at what ESPN did during that caution on lap 3. They went to commercial, then came back and forced Dawratty on us, then babbled about college football. Thanks guys!

After a long red flag, the field hit pit road at about lap 70. ESPN actually covered this round pretty well. Shannon Spake was clueless about Ryan Newman only getting 2 tires, but Punch and Petree caught it and updated us right away.

After Biffle’s spin, most of the cars came to pit road with about 55 to go. Unfortunately, ESPN was over-focusing on Biffle and missed showing the cars making the break for pit road. What we weren’t told, and what ESPN apparently didn’t notice, was that Reed Sorenson stayed out when the other leaders pitted. In fact, Sorenson continued to lead the field around under caution until he inexplicably darted down pit road following the pace car as the field was coming to the restart. Andy Petree seemed to be completely out of the loop on this. When he saw Sorenson go down pit road, he thought it was Jimmie Johnson! Yep, Sorenson was leading the field down to the restart and ESPN was completely oblivious! (Sorenson was not just some backmarker either, he had been in or near the top-10 all night). Dr. Punch tried to cover for Petree by claiming that Sorenson’s and Johnson’s cars looked almost alike. Nice try, Jerry. They have completely different paint schemes. What was ESPN doing as Sorenson was leading the field around under the caution for multiple laps? Well, let’s see. Oh yeah, they were showing off their precious DAFT TRACKER and covering the pitstop of the non-factor 77 car (the lucky dog on that caution)! ESPN apparently decided to go on as if nothing had happened. They never explained what was going on with Sorenson, and they never talked about him again for the rest of the night.

After Kahne’s spin, some of the lead-lap cars came down pit road with 42 to go. We missed seeing which cars made the break for pit road because ESPN was busy showing their third replay of the Kahne incident. Punch talked as if all the leaders were coming to the pits, but thankfully Rusty was there (I can’t believe I just said that) to point out that most of the leaders stayed out. The only major cars that pitted were Johnson and Vickers. (Note to Andy Petree - Johnson took gas only.) I’ll give ESPN some credit here, though – they did eventually show a replay of the leaders making/not making the break for the pits.

With 37 laps to go, Petree said that Johnson had fresher tires than Edwards. In fact, they had both last changed tires under the caution with 55 to go. Nobody bothered to correct him.

After Hamlin’s spin with 25 to go, ESPN finally figured out that they needed to show the cars LIVE as they were making/not making the break for pit road. Only some lead-lap cars made stops at this point, and there were now at least 3 different pit strategies unfolding on the track among the lead-lap cars. Unfortunately, ESPN allowed the race to restart with 20 to go without resetting the field for us! What did they do instead? Well, they just couldn’t resist yet another re-hash of Hamlin’s spin!!!

To top that off, they decided to “Go Full Throttle” on the restart!!! Yes, the most important restart of the race with a mixed-up field. Things were certain to be interesting, yet we were forced to look at random in-car shots and stationary camera views! Thanks ESPN! You ruined the most interesting restart of the race! Way to go!!!

Finally, after another caution and before the final restart, Petree was again talking about Johnson having “just been on pit road” and having “fresher tires” than other cars. Note to Andy – Johnson last changed tires with most all the other cars - with 55 to go. When he came in after that with 42 to go, he only got a splash of gas. GEEZ!

Hopefully, things will be better tonight for the Cup race, but I’m not optimistic. They do seem to be taking baby steps, though. Maybe they’ll figure it out by the end of the year…

Why do the ESPN reporters ignore the BUSCH DRIVERS in the BUSCH RACE?!? They are very rarely mentioned! I usually mute the t.v. and listen to the radio, I got so disgusted with the coverage Saturday night that I just turned the t.v. off and listened to the radio only! Judging by how much ESPN missed during the Cup race, I didn't loose anything by doing such!

John, you and others here crack me up. Some of you are so closed minded. I am a huge NASCAR fan. But believe it or not, I realize NASCAR is not the most popular sport in the United States. There are other sports out there besides NASCAR!

John you always complain about NASCAR Countdown, so why do you care if it was not shown on ESPN2? Also you complain how college football ran long on ESPN. Do you not remember last season when a Notre Dame Game ran so long on NBC, NASCAR had to delay the start of the race!

College Football is just as popular, if more popular than NASCAR. ITs not like ESPN missed the start of the race. Stop being so close minded. You don't even like NASCAR Countdown anyways!

When the season started I signed up for the TrackPass Scanner through the NASCAR website. I like being able to listen to my favorite driver, his spotter and crew chief during the races. It was $29.95 for the entire season which averages out to $0.83 per race-not bad, if you ask me.

When the coverage switched over to NBC briefly, local coverage of the race was delayed by over an hour due to the funeral of Lady Bird Johnson being on every single local network here in central Texas. In a moment of panic, I upgraded to the TrackPass PitCommand for another fifteen or twenty bucks-I forget, but it was well worth it.

With PitCommand, I can listen to my favorite driver, see the stats of specific drivers (I can pick and choose which ones I want), get a track simulator which shows where everyone is AND the radio broadcast is also available with PitCommand.

Considering the crappy coverage that the networks have been subjecting us to, to me, buying TrackPass Scanner and the upgrade to PitCommand was worth every penny and I'll do it again next season. Right now all three levels are half price so if you wanted to get them, the scanner option is $14.95 and PitCommand is $29.95. They have RaceView which I did try for free but didn't really care for-it's $39.95 for the rest of the season. For some reason, they don't offer these options with the Busch races. I sure do wish they did, though.

Due to the amount of stress and frustration we are all dealing with thanks to ESPN, paying a little money for the TrackPass options is more than worth it.